Last time, I posted about the first four species of automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) that can run and ruin our relationships with others. Here are the remaining five species to become aware of when examining your own stinkin' thinkin':
5. "I Feel Therefore I Think" Thinking (When physical feelings and/or emotions sabotage objective thinking.)
Feelings are fleeting. This is the first noble truth. No feeling is going to come and stay with you forever. All feelings, be them physical feelings or emotions-based feelings, will eventually pass. Having shared this, how is it we get into the bad habit of believing that our feelings dictate the facts of any given circumstance or situation we find ourselves in? Feelings are NOT facts generally speaking. Remember, they come...and they go. The facts don't come and go. Facts stick around no matter what else is going on around us...and will continue to stick around no matter how much we may try to ignore them.
People who struggle with this particular species of ANTs have somehow confused feelings that come and go with facts that never leave. This is especially true for those who struggle with anxiety. Beyond the obvious to do with changes in one's physical sensations ("Oh, my stomach hurts, I HAVE CANCER!"), many of us aren't even in the present moment when we react or respond to something we are asked or are involved in.
Just the other day I was at the library and the clerk behind the desk was rambling on to a patron about the library's fax machine. When I walked up, I heard the clerk say "Well, you can go to the reference librarian right over there (as she pointed to her) and she can help you." Great, right? Well, not really. At this point, the clerk started talking about the fax machine AGAIN and how it works to this patron for ????? purpose? By the time the patron was able to escape, I walked up and said to the clerk, "You know, you probably would have been better off just letting the patron go over to the reference librarian when you told her she could help her with that fax." The clerk looked at me and said, "Well, sometimes the reference librarian is busy." I said, "Is she busy now?" (Obviously not as the reference librarian was looking in our direction for the past 5 minutes and was doing nothing with nobody!) Then I said, "Well, when there's a line, that's your signal to basically wrap it up and wait on the next person." This clerk looked me in the eye and actually said to me, "What line?!" I said, "I'm the line!" (DOH!!!!) See what I mean? Because the clerk was somewhere else in her head thinking about God knows what outside of right now and real life reality....this is how crap like this occurs! "I Feel Therefore I Think!" Whatever she was doing up in her head, she was clearly not paying attention to the reality going on in the library around here the moment I showed up! ;-) Focusing on the facts versus focusing on one's feelings isn't as easy as it may appear reading about it here and now. Lots of people talk and respond to things that have nothing to do with "right now and real life reality"; they are responding to something else from somewhere else be it from their past---or their future catastrophic fictional account of reality (anticipatory anxiety about the future). In the end, one has to practice living in the present moments of their life without going back and forth mentally to anywhere BUT real life and right now reality when interacting with others. A stomach ache doesn't mean you have cancer...and a line CAN mean one person not fifty!
6. "Negative Nellie" Thinking
This particular ANT species speaks for itself. Negative Nellie thinking is NOT a preventative which ensures that any bad things which happen to us will "pinch" less when they occur. Nor is Negative Nellie thinking a way to prevent the bad things in life from happening in the first place. Yes, I have heard "Well, if I think the worst is going to happen and it doesn't, then I will feel good!" That's kind of like saying, "Well, if I walk into the ocean with weights on my ankles and I don't drown, then I had me a good day!" When we let our negative-nellie-isms take up space in our minds and hearts---we instead repeatedly traumatize ourselves with our own dreadful thoughts and feelings associated with those thoughts! This is like playing with knives every day and then believing if one of the knives actually cuts you, it won't hurt as much! Or even worse, that if you stopped playing with knives every day, then a knife will SURELY cut you because you stopped playing with knives every day! Yikes!
7. "You Can Read My Mind...and Vice Versa" Thinking (Fortune telling)
This mind-reading thing keeps us under-responsible about communicating effectively with one another. It is easy to get lazy about our own communication process and style. There are always certain things we don't want to talk about as much as we do other, more pleasant topics. Time to put on our big girl and big boy pants and get over ourselves in this regard. We don't just get to talk about stuff we want to talk about; many times, we need to talk about "difficult" or "boring" or "uninteresting" subjects in order to authentically understand and be understood by one another. Oh...and do this every single day if we are "together" as a couple ...or a parent...or a best friend... This mind-reading thing prevents any of that from happening (to authentically understand someone else and to be authentically understood by someone else). Instead, we guzzle the Kool-Aid concerning what we "already know" about the other person and why they say and do the things they say and do. Unless the person is an addict (and everything they say and do is in order to get their "fix")...there is no mind-reading thing that is going to work between two people, period. So stop it. It's a very bad habit.
8. "I Can See the Future" Thinking (Prophecy)
Prophecy isn't new. Remember Edgar Cayce? Or Jeanne Nixon? These were so-called "prophets" of the bygone era who used to come out with "Predictions for 19XX" in the National Enquirer every Christmas. Of course, 99.999% of these predictions were wrong year in and year out. Grant it, some predictions are more obviously accurate than others: if you drink five glasses of wine tonight, the chances are very great that you WILL get schwasted. But that's more a cause and effect kind of thinking at work rather than this "I Can See the Future" thinking referred to here.
When we engage in this type of ant species thinking...we believe we have control over outcomes we have no real control over. Period. If ever there was an exercise in futility, this is it. I can't control the future just because I claim that I see this or that coming on down the pike. And neither can you. We can plan for our own future in an appropriate way and we can "work the plan" in order to make it an eventual reality...but that's the most and best we can do. We cannot really see into the future...or predict it. Nobody can. We can only do our part to make good and right decisions, in a timely manner, each and every day. And these decisions, when they are genuinely good for us, will help us move from where we are right now...to where we want to be in our life down the road...
Today Tori Spelling was on the tube talking about some psychic network and how she needs it to feel good about herself and her future for only 75 cents a minute. Therapy is a much better buy I'm just sayin'.
9. "I Have to Label Everything" Thinking
Labeling is basically prejudice in a more upmarket suit of clothes. Nobody likes being called prejudiced, but we all are to some degree and extent. Labeling is just a fancier way of putting it. If I don't understand "it" or if "it" isn't enough like I am...labeling "it" makes me feel like I have to advantage over "it" and "it" can't hurt me or surprise me in some negative way. Okay. That's how the logic generally flows.
Labels prevent us from truly understanding what is before us...what is before us may be a person, or an unfamiliar situation...or a given circumstance or situation we are going through. If we label it, then we feel we have a sense of power over it. Which we don't, but we still want to believe that anyway. Being open to finding out more about a thing or a person or a place or a circumstance is a good practice to stomp out this particular species of ANT.
Probably the funniest (recent) case of labeling was as I was watching an episode of "Southern Charm" (don't ask!). As "Kathryn" was having lunch with "Cooper", he mentions her Birkin bag (purse) as she sits down to join him at the table. She makes a comment how she got it for herself because she deserved it...and then you hear her say (to the audience) that the bag is a fake because these bi**ches are like that. That's labeling...two-way labeling as a matter of fact. To be impressed...and to impress. Sad. Which reminds me to find that Celine I was planning to take out of hibernation now that it's SPRING!
Until next time...
;-)
5. "I Feel Therefore I Think" Thinking (When physical feelings and/or emotions sabotage objective thinking.)
Feelings are fleeting. This is the first noble truth. No feeling is going to come and stay with you forever. All feelings, be them physical feelings or emotions-based feelings, will eventually pass. Having shared this, how is it we get into the bad habit of believing that our feelings dictate the facts of any given circumstance or situation we find ourselves in? Feelings are NOT facts generally speaking. Remember, they come...and they go. The facts don't come and go. Facts stick around no matter what else is going on around us...and will continue to stick around no matter how much we may try to ignore them.
People who struggle with this particular species of ANTs have somehow confused feelings that come and go with facts that never leave. This is especially true for those who struggle with anxiety. Beyond the obvious to do with changes in one's physical sensations ("Oh, my stomach hurts, I HAVE CANCER!"), many of us aren't even in the present moment when we react or respond to something we are asked or are involved in.
Just the other day I was at the library and the clerk behind the desk was rambling on to a patron about the library's fax machine. When I walked up, I heard the clerk say "Well, you can go to the reference librarian right over there (as she pointed to her) and she can help you." Great, right? Well, not really. At this point, the clerk started talking about the fax machine AGAIN and how it works to this patron for ????? purpose? By the time the patron was able to escape, I walked up and said to the clerk, "You know, you probably would have been better off just letting the patron go over to the reference librarian when you told her she could help her with that fax." The clerk looked at me and said, "Well, sometimes the reference librarian is busy." I said, "Is she busy now?" (Obviously not as the reference librarian was looking in our direction for the past 5 minutes and was doing nothing with nobody!) Then I said, "Well, when there's a line, that's your signal to basically wrap it up and wait on the next person." This clerk looked me in the eye and actually said to me, "What line?!" I said, "I'm the line!" (DOH!!!!) See what I mean? Because the clerk was somewhere else in her head thinking about God knows what outside of right now and real life reality....this is how crap like this occurs! "I Feel Therefore I Think!" Whatever she was doing up in her head, she was clearly not paying attention to the reality going on in the library around here the moment I showed up! ;-) Focusing on the facts versus focusing on one's feelings isn't as easy as it may appear reading about it here and now. Lots of people talk and respond to things that have nothing to do with "right now and real life reality"; they are responding to something else from somewhere else be it from their past---or their future catastrophic fictional account of reality (anticipatory anxiety about the future). In the end, one has to practice living in the present moments of their life without going back and forth mentally to anywhere BUT real life and right now reality when interacting with others. A stomach ache doesn't mean you have cancer...and a line CAN mean one person not fifty!
6. "Negative Nellie" Thinking
This particular ANT species speaks for itself. Negative Nellie thinking is NOT a preventative which ensures that any bad things which happen to us will "pinch" less when they occur. Nor is Negative Nellie thinking a way to prevent the bad things in life from happening in the first place. Yes, I have heard "Well, if I think the worst is going to happen and it doesn't, then I will feel good!" That's kind of like saying, "Well, if I walk into the ocean with weights on my ankles and I don't drown, then I had me a good day!" When we let our negative-nellie-isms take up space in our minds and hearts---we instead repeatedly traumatize ourselves with our own dreadful thoughts and feelings associated with those thoughts! This is like playing with knives every day and then believing if one of the knives actually cuts you, it won't hurt as much! Or even worse, that if you stopped playing with knives every day, then a knife will SURELY cut you because you stopped playing with knives every day! Yikes!
7. "You Can Read My Mind...and Vice Versa" Thinking (Fortune telling)
This mind-reading thing keeps us under-responsible about communicating effectively with one another. It is easy to get lazy about our own communication process and style. There are always certain things we don't want to talk about as much as we do other, more pleasant topics. Time to put on our big girl and big boy pants and get over ourselves in this regard. We don't just get to talk about stuff we want to talk about; many times, we need to talk about "difficult" or "boring" or "uninteresting" subjects in order to authentically understand and be understood by one another. Oh...and do this every single day if we are "together" as a couple ...or a parent...or a best friend... This mind-reading thing prevents any of that from happening (to authentically understand someone else and to be authentically understood by someone else). Instead, we guzzle the Kool-Aid concerning what we "already know" about the other person and why they say and do the things they say and do. Unless the person is an addict (and everything they say and do is in order to get their "fix")...there is no mind-reading thing that is going to work between two people, period. So stop it. It's a very bad habit.
8. "I Can See the Future" Thinking (Prophecy)
Prophecy isn't new. Remember Edgar Cayce? Or Jeanne Nixon? These were so-called "prophets" of the bygone era who used to come out with "Predictions for 19XX" in the National Enquirer every Christmas. Of course, 99.999% of these predictions were wrong year in and year out. Grant it, some predictions are more obviously accurate than others: if you drink five glasses of wine tonight, the chances are very great that you WILL get schwasted. But that's more a cause and effect kind of thinking at work rather than this "I Can See the Future" thinking referred to here.
When we engage in this type of ant species thinking...we believe we have control over outcomes we have no real control over. Period. If ever there was an exercise in futility, this is it. I can't control the future just because I claim that I see this or that coming on down the pike. And neither can you. We can plan for our own future in an appropriate way and we can "work the plan" in order to make it an eventual reality...but that's the most and best we can do. We cannot really see into the future...or predict it. Nobody can. We can only do our part to make good and right decisions, in a timely manner, each and every day. And these decisions, when they are genuinely good for us, will help us move from where we are right now...to where we want to be in our life down the road...
Today Tori Spelling was on the tube talking about some psychic network and how she needs it to feel good about herself and her future for only 75 cents a minute. Therapy is a much better buy I'm just sayin'.
9. "I Have to Label Everything" Thinking
Labeling is basically prejudice in a more upmarket suit of clothes. Nobody likes being called prejudiced, but we all are to some degree and extent. Labeling is just a fancier way of putting it. If I don't understand "it" or if "it" isn't enough like I am...labeling "it" makes me feel like I have to advantage over "it" and "it" can't hurt me or surprise me in some negative way. Okay. That's how the logic generally flows.
Labels prevent us from truly understanding what is before us...what is before us may be a person, or an unfamiliar situation...or a given circumstance or situation we are going through. If we label it, then we feel we have a sense of power over it. Which we don't, but we still want to believe that anyway. Being open to finding out more about a thing or a person or a place or a circumstance is a good practice to stomp out this particular species of ANT.
Probably the funniest (recent) case of labeling was as I was watching an episode of "Southern Charm" (don't ask!). As "Kathryn" was having lunch with "Cooper", he mentions her Birkin bag (purse) as she sits down to join him at the table. She makes a comment how she got it for herself because she deserved it...and then you hear her say (to the audience) that the bag is a fake because these bi**ches are like that. That's labeling...two-way labeling as a matter of fact. To be impressed...and to impress. Sad. Which reminds me to find that Celine I was planning to take out of hibernation now that it's SPRING!
Until next time...
;-)